Once I got home, the real fun started.
One thing I was worried about was how the critters would react to me. Stacie’s dad had a stroke some time ago, and there were major personality changes. I don’t seem to have suffered that side-effect – if I had Stacie would have brought it up to me by now. And apparently it changed how he smelled, because their dog wanted nothing to do with him after he got home. Finn and the cats are my little buddies. If they suddenly wanted nothing to do with me, that would not be good.
It turned out there was nothing to worry about. Finn and the cats were like “where have you been?” And that was it. Finn wouldn’t leave me alone once I got home, because he missed his buddy. Peanut is sleeping on the bed and on the bed under the fridge in my office. Baby is still hanging around my office and yelling at me to feed her at all hours of the day. And Sweety-Pie is still demanding fresh bottled water, and stealing the bed in my office whenever Peanut isn’t in it.
In early November, I started seeing an outpatient speech therapist. The office is about 20 minutes from home, so that’s nice. It isn’t nearly as much of a pain in my asshole to get there as Robbinsdale. Of, Elvis forbid, Abbott Northwestern which takes as long to get to as Robbinsdale, but it involves driving right trough Minneapolis. And back again, which wouldn’t be that bad, except the part where I have to make it across five lanes of traffic that moves about as fast as a parking lot.
And then it got ridiculous. My last payday was two weeks after I was hostibilized. And it was for all of 4 hours plus some PTO I hadn’t spent. No problem – Short-Term Disability kicks in after 2 weeks. So I was supposed to start getting paid the next week. Problem: my usual doctor was all booked up until sometime in December, so I had to see an alternate. And he was flat-out refusing to write the doctor’s note for STD. And I have a mortgage.
I had seen him on 10 November, he confirmed that I was in no condition to go to work, and had me schedule an appointment with Neurology. He told me if the neurology appointment was too far away, he would fill out the paperwork. Well, it wasn’t until 5 December. So Stacie headed back in to the office and dropped off the paperwork with the receptionist.
And he sat on it for three weeks. Finally, after a series of phone calls from an increasingly-irate Stacie, we just showed up and camped the waiting room. It didn’t take long for my favorite nurse of my regular doctor came to see us.
She Gets. Shit. Done.
A half hour later I had the paperwork all filled out, including waiting for the doctor to sign it.
But I digress. Speech therapy. It started with an assessment. It wasn’t a full-on battery of cognitive testing, because my most obvious problems were immediately apparent. So we worked on practicing talking, writing, word finding, etc. I would get assignments to do between sessions. Really difficult stuff, like filling in the blanks on a 4×4 matrix where I had to come up with words that started with the letters on the horizontal axis in the categories on the vertical axis. I’d have two of those per page, and one or two pages to do. Then more complicated stuff like 3 synonyms for each of 30 words, and a timed exercise where I had to find 10 words per category and a list of categories. Really difficult stuff like that.
It kicked my ass. I would try to finish up my homework in bed at night, and I would spend a lot more time drawing a blank on something like “name a state that starts with T,” or “find three synonyms for ‘big.’” And of course Stacie couldn’t help me – it would defeat the purpose. I wasn’t looking things up on my phone, either, for the same reason. Not only wouldn’t I learn anything, but the speech therapist would get inaccurate information on just how screwed up I was.
But I noticed improvements. They were slow and incremental, but I was improving.
I tried to reread the Thrawn trilogy. It was taking me an hour to make it through a single chapter. Within a couple months I could just casually read a book again.
The most disturbing part was the fatigue. I would read a chapter of the Thrawn trilogy, and have to go lie down. A speech therapy session would require a nap afterward. Homework? Same thing.
Thanksgiving with my in-laws I basically camped on the couch, answered some questions, told the “go get a beehive” story, and fell asleep. Christmas was much better. I could actually have a few conversations with long pauses in between them, and didn’t end up passing out on the couch. Progress!
I brought it up with the speech therapist, and she told me it was normal under the circumstances. Basically, my brain was trying its damnedest to reroute and rewire the nerve pathways that had died when the stroke happened.
It’s gotten better, but for a while I was operating in six hour stretches and then going to sleep. Then getting up a couple hours later and doing it again.
So I’ve been making progress, but it was slow.
The worst part was when we’d go out to eat. I could read the menus, but I couldn’t order coherently. I’d have to explain what I wanted to Stacie and have her order for me. This would involve a lot of pointing at the menu, and answering yes or no questions, or relying on what she knows of what I eat (which is quite a bit – she’s known me for over eight years).
Luckily, we have a few places where we’re regulars. So it wasn’t as embarrassing as it could have been. We let a few staff at a few places know what was up, but these were places where we’d been going for years and we knew the people personally.
So after a few weeks she made me order for myself at a Greek diner. I had to concentrate and speak slowly, but I made it through. Stacie was in tears, and the waitress (who had been hired a couple of days before) was mystified. She explained, and the waitress said she hadn’t even noticed. Then she told the rest of the staff, and there was great rejoicing. For certain values of “great rejoicing.”
In December we went to a speakeasy in Anoka. I asked the speech therapist beforehand if drinking was contraindicated in my present state. I also explained that “drinking” meant three or four drinks over the course of the evening, not a full-on drinking binge; I’m not a heavy drinker – I occasionally have one or two on a weekend or after work, and I’ve been known to have a few with friends. She said the damage was already done. My brain damage wasn’t going to get any worse without another stroke, but be careful because I could get inebriated enough to lose my powers of speech.
Challenge. Accepted. And since I’m from the Midwest, hold my corn.
We went there, and a good time was had by all. We indulged in the libations, and also had some snacks. I had a few drinks, but I did not lose the power of speech. In fact, the couple we were with said they wouldn’t have known I’d had a stroke if I hadn’t told them. So great success?
I’m now reading and typing about at a normal level, all my cognitive abilities are more or less back to normal except “speed of lexical recall,” especially rapid picture naming.
This is incredibly good news. After three months I’ve gone from not being able to spell my name or talk coherently to being able to to almost everything I could before. Except for some memory issues and a major stutter, I’m fine.
I’ve also been keeping up with my wound care appointments. In fact, I’ve been going once a week and getting a new and exciting type of bandage. It’s double-wrapped, and extra-absorbent. Most people it stays on for a week. But since I apparently bleed acid, it only goes about four days. I don’t actually bleed acid, but the lymphatic drainage is highly caustic. It can cause chemical burns on exposed skin. The first week they applied it, it lasted the weekend and then the only thing keeping me from cutting it off was that I was getting it looked at that afternoon and I figured the doc would want to see it.
So I cut it off after three or four days, then do my normal bandages for the rest of the week. And the underlying wound is finally healing. Skin bridges, the wounds are getting smaller and shallower, all that good stuff. A couple of weeks ago I noticed I could actually walk like an amputee again, not a miserable cripple. So that’s a Good Thing. I think I’ll finally be able to hit the trails this summer.